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EVAPORATING AS A HOME INDUSTRY IN EASTERN UNITED STATES 



EVAPORATING AS A HOME INDUSTRY IN 

 EASTERN UNITED STATES 



By G. F. Warren 



In the past twenty-five years great progress has 

 been made in each of the three methods of preserving 

 fruit: drying or evaporating, canning or preserving, 



and extracting the 

 juice. Canning for 

 marliet has largely 

 passed into the 

 hands of firms that 

 operate expensive 

 canneries and make 

 this their business. 

 Evaporation has 

 also passed through 

 a period of great 

 development from 

 the old methods of 

 drying in the sun. 

 But while it has 

 progressed to so 

 great an extent, it 

 still remains as a 

 home industry in 

 the East. Perhaps 

 it is because the 

 equipment of a good 

 evaporator lies within the means of a farmer, 

 while the equipment of a canning factory is very 

 expensive. The Twelfth Census report gives the 

 total product of evaporated fruit in 1899 as 144,- 

 804,638 pounds. A large part of this represents 

 the product of the farmers' home evaporators. 



The evaporator furnishes a profitable outlet for 

 fruit that is undesirable for market purposes. It 

 not only makes such fruit a source of profit, but 

 keeps it from the market where it would compete 

 with good fruit and lower the price. In years 

 of low prices, the entire crop can be evaporated 

 and held for better prices. Not all of the fruit 

 evaporated is of poor quality. In some regions, 

 fruits are grown primarily for evaporation. In 

 Wayne county. New York, nearly half of the apple- 

 growers regularly evaporate all their crop or sell 

 it to neighbors for that purpose. 



Extent of the industry. 



Apples, pears, raspberries, peaches, plums, cher- 

 ries, quinces, huckleberries, currants, peas, corn, 

 potatoes, pumpkins, and other crops are evaporated 

 to some extent in the East. The apple-evaporating 

 is by far the most important. The following table 

 gives the average amounts of dried apples exported 

 and shows the increase in these amounts : 



Fig. 255. A cabinet evaporator. 



The center of the apple-evaporating industry is 

 Wayne county, New York. This county undoubt- 

 edly produces more evaporated apples than any 

 state outside of New York, except perhaps Cali- 

 fornia. In 1902, this county evaporated over 

 3,000,000 bushels of apples, producing about 

 20,000,000 pounds of dried stock. The average 

 for the past five years (1900-05) has been about 

 15,000,000 pounds. Over 70 per cent of the total 

 crop is evaporated. This evaporation is nearly all 

 done by the farmers who grow the fruit or by 

 their neighbors. The evaporators are almost as 

 characteristic of the farms as are the barns in a 

 dairy region. Evaporating is also done in the 

 villages. The methods described in this article are 

 founded on New York experience. (See page 165.) 



Sun drying. 



Until about 1870, sun drying, or drying over the 

 kitchen stove, were the only methods used. Prob- 

 ably, the beginning of the evaporating industry 

 was with the invention of the Lippy fruit-drier, in 

 1865. It was about fifteen years later before the 

 evaporator largely replaced the sun-drying method. 

 Many farmers still dry fruit in the sun, but in the 

 East large quantities are not often so dried by one 

 person. The sun-drying is ordinarily done on racks, 

 made of lath placed about one-fourth inch apart 

 and covered with cloth or paper, or made of thin 



Fruit evaporator adapted to kitchen stove. 



lumber. Slices of apples are sometimes strung on 

 strings and hung in the sun to dry. 



Evaporation gives a much better looking product, 

 that is more palatable and more digestible, and 

 that consequently brings a much higher price. At 

 the date of this writing (February 1906) the best 

 quality of evaporated apples is quoted in New York 

 City at eleven and one-half cents per pound, while 

 the best sun-dried stock is quoted at seven cents. 



